Morgan McFall-Johnsen

NASA is hiring four people to spend 378 days living inside a simulated Mars habitat in Houston.The experiment is called the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA).We spoke with one of the CHAPEA leads, Suzanne Bell, to figure out just how hard it would be to get selected.NASA is looking for people who are “as astronaut-like as possible,” said Bell, who also leads NASA’s Behavioral Health and Performance Lab.See if you have what it takes.The point of CHAPEA is that it helps NASA…

NASA returned to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years on Thursday, with help from Houston-based company Intuitive Machines.The uncrewed Odysseus lunar lander, built and operated by Intuitive Machines, became the first commercial spacecraft ever to land on the moon on Thursday, when it touched down on the lunar surface at about 6:23 p.m. EST.But in that very moment, it suddenly stopped communicating with mission controllers. The control room on NASA’s livestream looked tense.You can…

Two lucky breaks and a stroke of genius saved Intuitive Machines’ moon-landing mission on Thursday.A serendipitous moment, a NASA experiment, and frantic, innovative software engineering rescued the company’s Odysseus lander from what could have been a catastrophic error — a switch that didn’t get flipped before launch.That simple mistake disabled the lasers designed to guide the spacecraft to a flat, safe spot for landing, Intuitive Machines cofounder and CEO Steve Altemus told reporters on Fri…

Voyager was one of NASA’s most ambitious missions, and Jupiter is arguably our solar system’s most beautiful planet. So when the two met for the first time, it was history — and art — in the making.NASA launched its twin Voyager spacecrafts in the summer of 1977. Voyager 1 was first to approach Jupiter, entering the gas giant’s orbit in March 1979.As the probe approached our solar system’s largest and swirliest planet that spring, it captured the iconic video below. It’s a time-lapse movie made…

Landing on the moon is so difficult that, until last year, only three nations had ever done it without crashing. Recently, India, Japan, and one private company — Intuitive Machines — have joined their ranks.Intuitive Machines’ moon landing on Thursday was particularly significant, returning the US to the lunar surface for the first time in nearly 52 years and softly landing the first commercial spacecraft on the moon.But the mission narrowly avoided the same fate as several lunar-landing attemp…

Two satellites nearly collided in space on Wednesday in a harrowing encounter that LeoLabs, a satellite-tracking company, called “too close for comfort.“NASA’s Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics, or TIMED, satellite passed by Russia’s inoperative Cosmos 2221 spacecraft with less than 65 feet of clearance. That’s shorter than the length of a tennis court.These satellites are non-maneuverable, meaning neither the US nor Russia have control over where they go.If they had col…

This could be the best month, of the best year for two decades, to see the Northern Lights, in part, thanks to openings in Earth’s magnetic field.The aurora borealis, commonly called the Northern Lights, are the stunning ribbons of shimmering green, pink, purple, and red that dance in the skies of the Arctic.When conditions are just right, they can appear as far south as Arizona or even Florida.If you’re lucky and you plan right, you might be able to see the Northern Lights this month. This all…

Watching a rocket launch is a thrilling experience. Watching SpaceX’s Starship, the world’s largest rocket ever, is even more exciting.Surely, watching it finally reach orbit for the first time would be a new type of thrill.You may have the opportunity to see either an explosion or a successful spaceflight live on Thursday morning, when SpaceX is set to try shooting Starship into orbit.SpaceX’s livestream of the launch attempt is scheduled to begin on Thursday at 8:29 am ET broadcasting on X. We…

Elon Musk was nowhere to be seen as SpaceX’s Starship mega-rocket finally flew into space, cruised above Earth, and plummeted back through the atmosphere on Thursday.Musk has been quite hands-on in the Starship-Super Heavy launch system’s development and testing process.He was in the control room for SpaceX’s first two attempts to launch the Starship-Super Heavy rocket system to space last year, in April and November. He even brought his son, X Æ A-12, for the November attempt.On both of those p…

SpaceX’s Starship captured a stunning video of its reentry into Earth’s atmosphere as it finished its first successful flight through space on Thursday.SpaceX aired the footage live on its webcast on X, showing thick ultra-heated plasma lashing Starship and turning parts of the spacecraft red-hot. See it for yourself:Watch the super hot plasma field grow as Starship re-enters the atmosphere! pic.twitter.com/to4UOF2KpdStarship completely dropped out communications after recording this footage, po…

SpaceX’s Starship megarocket finally thundered through the skies, past the stratosphere, and into space Thursday morning.It was a spectacular finale to years of secretive development, explosive test flights, and regulatory hurdles. With the launch, SpaceX has proved it can not only build the tallest and most powerful rocket on Earth but also fly it beyond this world.However, during its red-hot plummet back to Earth, Starship dropped out of communication with SpaceX, and the company shortly there…

Gazing at the moon, you may see a face or a round of cheese, but some astronomers see the ideal spot for their next giant telescope.They’re already drafting blueprints and making proposals — some with cash from an interested NASA.One moonshot plan would build a giant radio dish spanning an entire crater on the far side of the moon.Another involves a giant triangle of lasers to detect ripples in space-time and trace them to distant collisions of black holes and massive dead stars.Yet another prop…

This rat has an enormous “dck,” and it’s a symptom of a bigger problem.You don’t need to be a scientist to know that rats don’t have bulbous, sky-high penises, or that words like “testtomcels,” “retat,” and “dissilced,” are total gibberish.And yet, the bogus diagram below appeared in a paper published last month by the scientific journal Frontiers in Cell Development and Biology.To its credit, the journal quickly retracted the paper. But its AI-generated images had already gone viral in online s…

The space business is in bloom and, so far, it’s largely unregulated.A commercial spacecraft touched down on the moon for the first time last month, in a NASA-sponsored mission by the Houston-based company Intuitive Machines.Then last week, SpaceX’s Starship mega-rocket finally launched into space and cruised above Earth without exploding.Both achievements were major leaps forward for NASA’s new moon program, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface using Starship. In fact, NASA’s bi…

The supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy has a side you’ve never seen before.A new image shows powerful magnetic fields swirling around our hometown black hole called Sagittarius A*, pronounced “A-star.“The image is the latest innovation of a groundbreaking scientific collaboration called the Event Horizon Telescope, or EHT, which rallied telescopes across the planet to focus on one black hole together, effectively creating an observatory as big as Earth.Five years ago, the EHT rel…

A total solar eclipse is crossing the US on April 8, 2024, giving more than 30 million people the rare opportunity to watch the moon obscure the sun and darken the skies.That’s just the people who live in the eclipse’s path. Countless others can see it just by driving an hour or two, or taking a short flight.To see totality — the moment when the moon fully blocks the sun — you need to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.Luckily, NASA made a map to pinpoint just where you shou…

The world’s largest digital camera is finally complete in a laboratory in Menlo Park, California.The SUV-sized Legacy Survey of Space and Time, or LSST, Camera weighs about 6,200 pounds — roughly 3 metric tons — and its front lens is more than 5 feet wide.The LSST camera has to be that big to achieve its mission of taking a 10-year digital survey of the entire southern sky, scanning the whole area every few nights, eventually creating the largest astronomical movie ever.“No one has ever looked a…

A total solar eclipse will turn afternoon skies dark from Texas to Maine on Monday.During the eclipse, the moon will cross between the Earth and the sun, completely blocking out the sun’s light. If you’re in the moon’s shadow, the sky will go dark for about three to four minutes, depending on your location.It’s the climax of a cosmic dance between our planet, the moon, and the sun.During a total solar eclipse, three key conditions happen at the same time: The moon is in the “new moon” phase; the…

The total solar eclipse that swept the US on Monday was so eventful that you might have missed some gems, even if you were in the path of totality.Everyone expected to see the diamond ring or the 360-degree sunset, but so much more happened.Thankfully, this may be one of the most heavily documented solar eclipses ever, so there are plenty of photos.Here are some Easter eggs you may have missed, especially if you were peeping through clouds.

As the desert city of Dubai flooded on Monday, onlookers pointed the finger at the government’s “cloud seeding” efforts.The program sends planes into oncoming storm clouds to inject them with substances that can help make more rain. Could it be the culprit for two years’ worth of rain falling on the United Arab Emirates city in just a day?It’s a tantalizing explanation. Trying to control the weather can sound tantamount to playing god. And if thousands of years of media and oral tradition tell u…